When this long-prayed-for Parliament at last met, the Lord Deputy took good care that it should be little else than a tribunal to register his edicts. A great many officers of the army had been chosen as Burgesses, while the Sheriffs of counties were employed to secure the election of members favourable to the demands of the Crown. In the Parliament of 1613 the recusants were, admitting all the returns to be correct, nearly one-half; but in that of 1634 they could not have exceeded one-third. The Lord Deputy nominated their Speaker, whom they did not dare to reject, and treated them invariably with the supreme contempt which no one knows so well how to exhibit towards a popular assembly as an apostate liberal. "Surely," he said in his speech from the throne, "so great a meanness cannot enter your hearts, as once to suspect his Majesty's gracious regard of you, and performance with you, once you affix yourselves upon his grace." His object in this appeal was the sordid and commonplace one—to obtain more money without rendering value for it. He accordingly carried through four whole subsidies of 50,000 pounds sterling each in the session of 1634; and two additional subsidies of the same amount at the opening of the next session. The Parliament, having thus answered his purpose, was summarily dissolved in April, 1635, and for four years more no other was called. During both sessions he had contrived, according to his agreement with the King, to postpone indefinitely the act which was to have confirmed "the graces," guaranteed in 1628. He even contrived to get a report of a Committee of the House of Commons, and the opinions of some of the Judges, against legislating on the subject at all, which report gave King Charles "a great deal of contentment."
With sufficient funds in hand for the ordinary expenses of the government, Strafford applied himself earnestly to the self-elected task of making his royal master "as absolute as any King in Christendom" on the Irish side of the channel. The plantation of Connaught, delayed by the late King's death, and abandoned among the new King's graces, was resumed as a main engine of obtaining more money. The proprietary of that Province had, in the thirteenth year of the late reign, paid 3,000 pounds into the Record Office at Dublin, for the registration of their deeds, but the entries not being made by the clerk employed, the title to every estate in the five western counties was now called in question. The "Commissioners to Inquire into Defective Titles" were let loose upon the devoted Province, with Sir William Parsons at their head, and the King's title to the whole of Mayo, Sligo and Roscommon, was found by packed, bribed, or intimidated juries; the grand jury of Galway having refused to find a similar verdict, were summoned to the Court of Castle Chamber, sentenced to pay a fine of 4,000 pounds each to the Crown, and the Sheriff that empanelled them, a fine of 1,000 pounds. The lawyers who pleaded for the actual proprietors were stripped of their gowns, the sheriff died in prison, and the work of spoliation proceeded. The young Earl of Ormond was glad to compound for a portion of his estates; the Earl of Kildare was committed to prison for refusing a similar composition; the Earl of Cork was compelled to pay a heavy fine for his intrusion into lands originally granted to the Church; the O'Byrnes of Wicklow commuted for 15,000 pounds, and the London Companies, for their Derry estates, paid no less than 70,000 pounds: a forced contribution for which those frugal citizens never forgave the thorough-going Deputy. By these means, and others less violent, such as bounties to the linen trade, he raised the annual revenue of the kingdom to 80,000 pounds a year, and was enabled to embody for the King's service an army of 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse.